Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) is a self-help guru who urges people to put tragedy behind them and get on with their lives. And that’s not easy for him to say. Ryan is still mourning the death of his wife. In flashbacks, we see a car swerving to avoid hitting a dog, and a woman being crushed.

Although Ryan is a great talker, there’s one detail about the accident that remains unspoken. That secret is at the core of “Love Happens,” a well-meaning but disappointing drama that also stars Jennifer Aniston as Eloise, a flower shop proprietor with whom Ryan would like to jump start his life.

The script by Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson (who also composed another piece of inspirational goop, “Dragonfly”) fails to make the basic premise credible. Because Burke mainly spews cliches about finding the strength to move on, it’s hard to understand how he has developed such a passionate following.

Perhaps if the film were conceived as a satire of the self-help movement, this wouldn’t matter, but we are meant to take Burke seriously as a true savant who can heal everyone but himself. But his nuggets of advice are so superficial that we never really believe in Burke’s celebrity status.